1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of pilfer-resistant dispensing. More particularly, the invention pertains to methods and apparatus for dispensing products in packages.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently there are a number of types of product merchandizing and/or dispensing displays. One of the basic methods of displaying products for sale consists of traditional shelves on which individual products are openly placed. This arrangement is found in most retail stores; including stores generally referred to as mass merchant discounters and in particular, chain drug stores and grocery stores. Typically the products are placed on the shelves openly, without protection(s) from pilferage of any kind. This open display arrangement is especially important at mass merchant type retailers because they have only a limited number of store associates present to provide product information and shopping assistance and therefore rely heavily on self-service shopping.
There are also a number of types of product dispensers and/or vending machines which display a multiplicity of products for viewing within a large enclosing housing, having frequently a clear glass or plastic façade, thereby preventing pilferage of the products prior to vending. However, such vending machines create a barrier between shoppers and the products rendering impossible the experience of interacting with and/or sampling a product, such as a fragrance, prior to dispensing the package. In the specific category of self-service shopping for high value, prestige fragrance products, such barrier creates a negative shopping experience for shoppers and a negative selling experience for retailers. Most such fragrances are sold in department type stores and fragrance specialty retailers, both of which provide individual sampling experiences and human assistance and product interaction prior to the sale. That positive shopping experience, which leads to most sales of prestige fragrances throughout the world, is what the present invention recreates at mass merchant retailers, where such interactive shopping experience is generally unavailable.
There are also currently a number of display and vending devices for testing, samples and sampling, such as with fragrances, but they do not combine in the same system with any device or method for self-service vending of the actual products therewith associated. There is therefore no direct and contiguous method for a shopper to sample, select and purchase in a one-stop operation at a self-service shopping environment.
As shown in FIG. 1, in the specific case of high value, prestige fragrance packages, which require pilferage protection(s) such as when currently sold at mass merchant discounters and the like, they are usually placed on shelves 2 inside a steel and/or wooden display case 1 enclosed behind glass doors 3 secured with a lock 4. This viewable display arrangement provides a secure, anti-pilferage environment for the products, but is detrimental in the extreme to every other aspect of the mass market retailers' and shoppers' experiences with display and sales of fragrance products. While the locked display case provides a secure environment for the prestige fragrances, it makes self-service shopping impossible thereby severely impeding sales at all such retailers which rely heavily on self-service shopping. It also provides no useful method whatever for shoppers to sample the fragrances, a function shown to be a necessary and integral part of the successful fragrance shopping and selling experience. It also requires a great deal of expensive and time consuming manual labor by retail associates to open the cabinets for and perform the various functions of assisting shoppers and checking and restocking inventory.
Market research and common sense show that successful thievery requires quick, deft, and concealed actions, and that the longer a thief must interact with a display of products in a self-service environment to steal one or more products, the more likely the thief is to be either discouraged or caught in the act. While the opposite is true of shoppers—the longer a shopper is enticed to interact with a display of products for sale, the more likely that a sale will be made. Hence the usefulness of a controlled system which combines semi-open-sell, or self-service sampling and shopping with a method with device of vending the products in a one-at-a-time manner with a built in pilfer-resistance time delay period between such vendings.